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NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says she may seek even more from the government before supporting the budget. (Rene Johnston / Toronto Star file photo)

By Robert Benzie and Rob FergusonQueen’s Park Bureau

Wed., May 8, 2013

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is upping the ante in a high-stakes game of political poker with Premier Kathleen Wynne.

With a $92-million June election on the table, Horwath said Wynne must sweeten the pot to win NDP support for the Liberal budget by creating an independent “Financial Accountability Office” — modelled on the federal Parliamentary Budget Office — to provide oversight of provincial spending.

But Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak, who wants a vote soon, warned Wednesday it’s all a bluff “to allow time for the NDP to cook up a backroom deal with the Liberals to prop them up.”

“If you think the government is corrupt and can’t be trusted with taxpayers’ dollars, the answer is not a new bureaucracy, it’s a new government,” said Hudak, whose party is trying to engineer a non-confidence vote to trigger an election before the budget is passed.

Wynne was open to Horwath’s proposal, which would cost up to $2.5 million, though she was not pleased that the New Democrat suggested there would be further demands in coming days.

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“It’s not going to be helpful to do this in bits and pieces in the media . . . we need to have an opportunity to have a back-and-forth with each other,” the premier said in Waterloo.

“I’m not afraid to go to an election. We will go to the people of Ontario with a plan.”

Ironically, that plan would be an election platform based on an NDP-influenced budget that included a 15 per cent cut in auto-insurance rates, new funding for home-care health services, and a youth jobs strategy.

Finance Minister Charles Sousa, who introduced the document last Thursday, did not rule out further concessions to Horwath, but warily noted “it’s time for us to get this budget passed.”

The NDP leader said her latest idea is “a way to ensure the people get the facts about spending and not the spin,” though a new legislative officer was not among the seven requests she made to Wynne in exchange for backing the minority Liberals’ budget.

“This is an opportunity for Ms. Wynne to really step up to the plate when it comes to putting some reality towards her claims of desire for accountability,” said Horwath.

Ratcheting up pressure on the New Democrats to force them to back the budget, the premier has been promoting the fiscal blueprint in NDP ridings.

She was in Kitchener—Waterloo, represented by MPP Catherine Fife, on Wednesday and heads to MPP Jagmeet Singh’s Bramalea—Gore—Malton riding Thursday to tout an auto insurance rate cut that he first proposed.

Against the backdrop of this heightened, campaign-like atmosphere, Hudak is imploring the NDP to back Tory procedural wrangling to enable an opposition-driven non-confidence motion to be tabled in the house Tuesday.

Hudak implored Horwath to back Tory procedural wrangling to enable an opposition-driven non-confidence motion to be tabled in the house instead of proposing ways to keep the Liberals afloat.

“If you think the government is corrupt and can’t be trusted with taxpayers’ dollars, the answer is not a new bureaucracy, it’s a new government,” the PC leader said.

He has said all along that only an election will clear the air.

In the legislature, Tory MPPs heckled Horwath when she castigated Sousa for his budget.

“Then pull the plug,” shot back one PC MPP at the NDP leader.

“It’s time for Andrea Horwath and Kathleen Wynne to actually come clean with voters and tell them where they stand,” he said, claiming the Liberals’ $585-million “gas plant scandal goes past the line into corruption.”

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